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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766830">Return</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope'>Nope</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2006-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2006-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:56:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766830</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything old is new again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Return</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I bring life," Rose says and Jack last gasps in reverse and too far away for the imagination to encompass, Gallifrey coalesces in the darkness. The Doctor, racked by regeneration, mistakes that change for part of his own.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>It takes time. The Doctor travels. The looms work. Back and forth. Back and forth.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>When the Time Lords come to Earth, Rose Tyler is already dead. They disinter the body and take it apart and, when Torchwood try to stop them, they take Torchwood apart too. Every atom of their existence, spread evenly throughout space and time.</p>
<p>"This should never have happened," they say.</p>
<p>In the void between spacetimes, they find the Cybercontroller. They take what they need and then they undo him, unravel his continuity and remake it without machines or the thoughts of them.</p>
<p>"Who is responsible for this?" they ask.</p>
<p>Time bends under their will. They trace echoes of journeys between universes and times. They find Dalek Sek. They end it.</p>
<p>"There is another fissure," they say.</p>
<p>Another Torchwood. Gwen never leaves the police. Owen is beaten to death in a bar. Toshiko is killed by the family Slitheen. Ianto and Lisa get a happy ending. Suzie has a long and successful career. Jack begs, but not for his own life. They tell him of Rose and he breaks. He gives them a hand. They give him an end. It is almost compassionate.</p>
<p>"The Doctor," they say.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>He doesn't know he was supposed to run. He stares in anguish and amazement and she smiles sadly and shoots him right between the hearts.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>There is a trial. It is all very proper. They hollow out his companions and cast them down into mundane linear existence.</p>
<p>"Genocide," they say.</p>
<p>He tells them it was war. He talks of monsters and of death, of all the people he saved and the billions more he never could. He tells them he did the best that could be done in the worst of circumstances and that he failed with a heavy heart but a clean conscience.</p>
<p>"Abomination," they say.</p>
<p>He tells them it was not of his doing. He tells them of Rose, of the brilliance of the ordinary, of ultimate courage in the face of ultimate despair.</p>
<p>They say "We are Time Lords" and he knows he has already lost.</p>
<p>"Who will stand for him?" they ask.</p>
<p>"I will," says the Master.</p>
<p>"I will," says the Rani.</p>
<p>"I will," says Romana.</p>
<p>"The war amnesty only stretches so far," they say.</p>
<p>"You surround yourself with criminals and insurrectionists," they say.</p>
<p>"We were real, once," he says. "We grappled the elemental forces of nature and we won. We bent time and space to our wills. We were great and glorious but we were not wise. Our action destroyed civilisations. Our inaction destroyed galaxies. Because we stood apart, mired in tradition. Because we kept our distance. Because we didn't feel or think or understand. There's no big answer. There's no massive Right and Truth and Beauty. There's just us. Going where we go. Doing what we can to help, doing our best not to harm. Living our lives. Because that's the gift, isn't it? Life? All that potential, all that power? That's what we have. That's what you have now! You have life! You don't have to repeat the old patterns, you don't have to get stuck in that endless loop, dying and regenerating over and over! We can be better than this!"</p>
<p>They force him to regenerate, and again, and again.</p>
<p>"Your last life," they say. "Will you confess?"</p>
<p>"Yes," he says. "I confess. I confess that I am the Doctor and that is all I have ever wanted to be. I confess that there are worlds out there where the skies burn and the seas sleep and the rivers dream and there is danger and injustice and tea and work to be done. I confess that while free I will do it. And I confess that I stole the Master's Stattenheim remote control when he was testifying earlier."</p>
<p>He grins and whistles and dives into his Mark 40 capsule and the Time Lords cries are lost under the groans of randomised dematerialisation.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>"On the run from my own people in a rackety old TARDIS," says the Doctor, careening around the Time Vortex, "with just one life to live."</p>
<p>He beams at his reflection.</p>
<p>"Fantastic!"</p>
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